Advice for a motorsport series logo please.

I was searching around the net for design ideas for a motorsport logo and have stumbled across your forum which seems very active and helpful in providing style and design advice to people. So I hope to pick your collective professional brains if I may.

I'm in the process of setting up a national club level Speed Championship for the car club I'm a member of. We are a lotus enthusiasts club called SELOC that is primarily web based SELOC | Lotus Enthusiasts Club (please feel free to comment on our website).

I've been looking at logos from both national and international race series and have been hoping to take design and style cues from them and incorporate them/take their the theme and apply it to our current logo.

I'm not particularly arty so I'm asking for as much advice as you're will to give in order for me to then try and get a product created.

I'm want to get the title of our series 'SELOC Speed Championship' included along with the year of the series which can easily be altered.

Our club logo takes influence from Lotus cars colours of green and yellow:

We have no official ties with lotus cars so cannot use their logo.

Current lotus race series run these logos, and whilst we have strong links with the organisers of them we again aren't involved in an official capacity. But I do like the design of them.

A design of the NASCAR logo is another influence I'd like to incorporate:

Which elements of each do you think will work with our current logo and how do you think they should be applied?

A lot of sports logos use an oblique (italic) text style, which implies movement.

Currently you club logo is rather static and says to me 'we admire these cars' rather than 'we race these cars' so adding some indication of movement and speed would be a good start, perhaps, using a dramatic silhouette of a Lotus taking a corner at speed maybe?

Am I right in thinking this logo will be a new design that's influenced by your club logo?

Thank you very much for replying. Hadn't really considered the perception of our current logo and it's an interesting take. We are starting to revamp the website as well so that sort of info is very useful.

Yes you are correct it will be a new design that draws from the club logo.

Well I had a go in the end. Went for a more simplistic logo. What do you think?

The green looks a lot darker in Illustrator than it does on here though.... strange... it's supposed to be the same colour as the SELOC logo from the website (not as shown in the first post which has come out the same colour as this).

The flag is a nice idea but instead of it being wavy (without the car, it would suggest more something along the lines of sailing?), you could keep it straight but "italicised" (slanted vertical lines) to emphasise the movement aspect? Same could apply to the typography as well and it may be a nice idea to vary the sizes of each line so as that they are evenly justified and line up either end? So SELOC would be quite large and speed championship would be fairly small (even each word occupying separate lines).

I sense that you are keen to keep the car detail in but at the moment, the arrangement seems a bit random and loose? Possibly placing everything into a box would make it look neater and more organised? After all, you want to convey the sense of organisation if it is something as big as a racing series. Enclosing everything in a box of some kind would even allow you to have the detail in reverse (i.e. white detail in a black box - apologies if me explaining some of these terms pre-empts some feeling of thinking of you as a complete design noob - I don't mean it that way at all, just want to be clear!). This way, you would have a very versatile logo and have it in any colour that you like.

I'm not a designer at all and my 'C' at Art GCSE doesn't really suggest I have any artistic flare either. I just downloaded the trial of Illustrator yesterday and had a go.

The championship is a very small series being held at already established events and it's right at the grass roots level of motorsport... hence why no money and not going to a proper designer and paying for it.

I'll have another play around with the logo today and post up when I'm done.